What are you playing?

[marurun]

Distant 3rd in the US, easy 2nd place in Japan.

[Exhuminator]

The PC Engine was the true successor to the NES, in a lot of ways.

For the PCECD, some of these games come across a bit like if the SNES had gotten that CD addon. I've found quite a few PCECD titles I want to dive into.

[Sarge]

Yeah, the PCE was the Sega Genesis of Japan, so to speak. Very popular there. It's actually remarkable that we got so many good games for the Genesis given that it did rather poorly in its home territory, but that was also the genius of the American branch. They knew how to get folks over here to bite.

[Segata]

Saturn was also hugely successful over there and why for me the comparison. Fantastic systems that still deserved more in the west.

[pook99]

Been playing the order 1886 on ps4 and spark the electric jester on steam. Order is allright, nothing special but its probably short enough to finish. Spark is a really good sonic style game, if you like 2d sonics or freedom planet it is definitely worth checking out. Probably going to replay run saber on snes this weekend as well, saw a video of it on youtube and it put me in the mood to play it.

[Gunstar Green]

Yeah, the PCE was the Sega Genesis of Japan, so to speak. Very popular there. It's actually remarkable that we got so many good games for the Genesis given that it did rather poorly in its home territory, but that was also the genius of the American branch. They knew how to get folks over here to bite.

The Japanese developers that did keep developing for the Genesis were pretty passionate about the scrappy underdog system. It has a cult following but nothing more than that. It helped that there's a lot of strong western games and Sega developed/backed games. Western countries kept them in the fight and kept certain companies like Namco interested.

PCE was the Super Famicom's only real competition but even so the Super Famicom's dominance was insane. SNES vs. Genesis was a much more even fight.

[Sload Soap]

Against my better judgement I got a copy of Battlefront 2. It's basically the only game my friends are playing so I had been nagged into it (that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it).

Mostly just played online. It's a pretty poor game to be honest. Nothing really stands out as good atm: the shooting feels loose and lacks punch, the vehicles usefulness is restricted by narrow map design, space combat is a turkey shoot, heroes vs villains can be fun but is most often less about skill and who has the best star cards.

It's a mess really and the xbox version I am playing is not very well optimized suffers from long loading times and bad lag online. It's a really good looking game but there isn't actually as much going than in a similar shooter like Battlefield 1 or Titanfall.

It lacks the depth of those two titles as well. There is a distinct lack of any metagame despite the increased variety of vehicles and hero characters. The star cards come closest but they are so incredibly unbalanced it's stupid. My friend (who is a SW fanboy and a bit of an apologist for the game) likened it to the weapon unlocks in Battlefield reasoning that as you progress you unlock better weapons and therefore an advantage.

I strongly disagree. The star cards are more like loot in a MMO, massively increasing the effectivness of various abilities and confering massive advantages regardless of skill. A better weapon in Battlefield will not make instantly turn me into a killing machine but a few rare rated star cards will seriously overpower your opponent. To make matters worse, and in an ironic twist, there is now a gulf between those players who bought loads of loot crates before they were switched off and us plebs who have to grind away. Truly this game is the epitome of grasping corporate greed and the end point of all the shit F2P, mobile game styled, microtransaction filled blockbuster releases.

Still I bought it so I'm the tosspot who keeps this shit going. Nice graphics tho.

[noiseredux]

my wife and I started co-oping Diablo III after Christmas. She had never played before but is really liking it. And I'm enjoying the dynamic of re-playing it with some help. Such a great game.

On a side-note, given how perfect this game translates to a controller it makes me wonder why Blizzard hasn't brought Heroes Of The Storm over to consoles.

[Anayo]

Yesterday a buddy of mine from high school was in town for the holidays. He came over and we played arcade games on my OG XBOX with Coinops 8 Massive installed on it. We played:

Windjammers: This was already a favorite of ours since we'd played of ours since we had played it at Lost Ark Arcade in Greensboro, NC. I could play this forever and ever.

Smash TV: This was neat, but really cheap. After a while it just felt like a noisy, repetitive quarter-eater.

Ninja Baseball Batman: First time playing this one. I recommend playing it at least once just to see how batcrap crazy it is. Mostly though it was just noisy sensory overload. I could hardly tell what my character was doing most of the time.

Burgertime: What a delightful game! I had never played this before, but it was always on my list of games to try before I die. I'd really like to go back and play this some more to try and get a better high score.

I, Robot (Atari 1984): This seemed exasperatingly weird at first, but once I got the hang of it I was hooked. This has the same addictive feeling as early-80's atari arcades and it's brimming with creativity and neat ideas. I really want to sink my teeth into it some more.

Robotron 2084: My friend had never seen this game before, so I showed it to him. It's really difficult though. I could barely get past 30,000 points.

[Exhuminator]

Finally got around to playing my Wii U last night. I'd been busy with holiday/family stuff and working on an exciting project. Anyway, I'm happy with the GamePad's reception range. I can turn the Wii U on in my dork cave, and take the GamePad into the living room, and still get good reception. That's impressive given the distance is a good 35' feet or so away, and through a brick fireplace. This is great because I like to do my portable gaming in the big poofy recliner we keep in the living room. And I plan to treat the Wii U as a portable when I'm using it single player.

Anyway the game I played was Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker. Pretty fun little action-puzzler, possibly inspired by Fez and Monument Valley. I finished the first ten levels. I'll play it some more later tonight. My only complaints thus far with Captain Toad are; I wish it didn't use touch screen inputs, and I wish the camera zoom was gradient not binary. Other than that, charming and fun stuff.